Capirotada and Menudo

Children wriggled and wailed as the man on the pulpit exalted the fantastic in fevers. With a few abra-cadabra's, the man in the suit and tie cued the crowd with a charisma and phraseology, and everyone applauded and danced and jumped, and pretty soon, even the adults joined the children in the wailing and wriggling. Everyone paid what they could; the show, after all, was free.

There was a funny looking man in the middle of it all, observing the whole thing from atop, watching everything go to and fro like a sea of hands. His sense of detachment made him feel egotistically maniacal, and he felt sorry for this. He got down and felt bad; he had no idea why, he just did, perhaps it occurred to him that everyone was fucked and everything was fucked, and even this idea gave him a sense of guilt, for what did he, this funny looking man, know about anything? to make such judgments? Who is who to say which is what and how much something means to someone if nothing to him?

He caught himself as a lump and moistness build up in his throat and eyes, he swallowed and breathed so as to contain the oceanic feeling. It passed; he felt regular now, meaning that he was again detached. He felt muddy on the inside, dry lips and skin on the outside.

He went to his Aunt's house afterwards. They ate Menudo and had Capirotada afterwards. Capirotada and Menudo. Most days were Capirotada and Menudo for this funny looking man. She showed him pictures of her younger days, but she couldn't explain most of them since she couldn't recall. Ay mijo, se me va la memoria. No worries Tia, he said, maybe it's better to not remember some times. She pointed out a picture where he was held by his mother, and his aunt was next to her; their hair was all fluffy; She combed her frail wires with her hand; she said, ay, would you look at that! my hair hasn't aged a bit! His uncle stepped into the living room and replied, me too! I'm as strong as an Ox! look. His uncle lifted the TV to show him. Now lift me, his Aunt said. Hmph! he replied, do you want to kill me woman!? beside, I'm tuckered out already. Then he disappeared into the kitchen to grab a Bud Light.

The funny looking man excused himself and stepped out into the porch; He remained in place for a while, thinking about Capirotada and Menudo. 

He recalled a time when the sirens were relentless, and where the helicopter would cut the air and send its' force thrashing down. And where the child next door, the one with ADD, always yelled weird things that no one understood but that made perfect sense to him, and he would hop the fence and find his way into the living room, perhaps in search of something he felt was missing. Where the phone would ring, and the telemarketer on the other side was but a mere a salesperson, and it was your neighbor, asking for a cup of sugar for their tea and coffee. A place where the wash would finish with a ping, and you'd throw it in the drier, which would whir and clank. And the stillness of the living room, where the television would be turned off, could still be heard calling you, so you would go to the computer and surf the net, but the dryer is done. ping. Then the house fire alarm would go off, fuck! you forgot about the tea kettle, as you would dash to turn off the bubbling the water and would run to the alarm and press the button on it to shut it off. Jesus! it's nothing, but it's everything. A place where you needed to stop the world.

it was odd feeling odd and feeling odd was odd, odd feelings, fee lingers

4:50 a.m. in a Denny's drinking coffee and eating fried dough balls called "pancake puppies." I read about the implosion of Capitalism and the commodification of spirituality. The state of affairs is in shit: violence, famine. I eat a pancake puppy and take a sip of warm coffee. It's all jacked and we've been hi-jacked. A pre-emptive manufactured condition raised on pop music and reality TV drama. The theater of operations indicates that we are losing the war, or is it that we are winning? I'm not even sure anymore; this uncertainty feels like an indication that my reality had been ruptured, dismantled, and reconfigured. The periphery lacks insight. My core vision lacks periphery. I am effectively blinded by too much. I can;t even describe the lamp that shines above me covered by some sort of 70's looking shade, meaning bell bottoms, meaning whatever 70's looking shade looks like.


4:55 a.m. it's been five minutes and my pancake puppies are getting colder. My coffee is now lukewarm. My toes are cold. no one is here. it is dark out. a few cars pass but I think it's only one car driving circles. Christmas songs play overhead: "joy to the world" etc.


I've not done enough to mistake my reality for a dream. I miss her warm touch. Her soft kiss. He laugh and smile. Her eyes grow distant when I try to talk to her; I am ineffective in the art of conversation and love. My relationship seems like a stroke of luck; i consider myself a lucky man despite the holes in the soles of my shoes. I tell no one of this hollow cold void. It grounds me and reminds me of the monolith beneath my boot. My pancake puppies are completely cold: 5:02 a.m. this coffee has grow colder. Tap water with food coloring and a teaspoon of creamer. Slurpee.


It's time for me to go; the sun rises. Today I did not sleep. A man desperate for some sort of help thought that I could help him and gave me some money for some advice. I doubt he heard what I had to say, but since he was entertained, he gave me more money. It was an odd feeling. and it was odd feeling odd.

Q

During the past 24 hours, movements and environments have gained a sharper distinction from my awareness. This has come from a breakneck shift. Jetlag disorientation.

I've noted:

Debris from crumbling buildings. Remnants of disappearing graffiti. Trace of repainted walls. Loose telephone wires. A helicopter that hovers still overhead, making its overbearing presence known to all below for 45 minutes. Dust and grime riddle the sidewalk. Wounded lug their belongings and drag their limbs across the rubble and cracked streets. Crushed cigarette packets and beer cans, empty artillery from a battle that's been waged carefully and gradually in war zones of Watts, East Los Angeles, Compton, South Central, and other communities. Glass shards and needles.

This occurs while everyone sleeps. During Spring, the chemical agent known as smog holds still, well into the Winter: the only difference is in visibility. This is simply one among many. 

Children of the ruins run around deserted landscapes; something feels wrong. Everyone is complacent. Conspiracy of silence. Everyone accustomed to everything. Desensitized. Numbified. Despiritualized. Someone should wage a battle for their conscious; Someone should wage a battle for mine; the only revolution. Que Viva...que...queue..quetza. Que que? 

Right outside of the L.A. County Jail on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue an ex-POW, a veterano, waits for the bus in his post-war uniform. He dons a pair of loc shades, perhaps from having seen too much and not enough, and he holds his head high and back, as though he has regained a sense of confidence and memory that bear down on his laid back strut. Leaning sideways, he lights a cigarette. On the back of his palm, the face of the sun sticks out its tongue, perhaps a reminder from a movida while in the pinta. He's full of cool and confidence. He's headed back home. He's headed to the Eastside. He's headed to Aztlan.

“I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream; that's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor... and surviving.”

Image: Flesh & Body /// Likeness: Mind & Soul

Man's Origin: Image & Likeness

Genesis 1:26:

“Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

:Image:

A. “An artificial imitation or representation of something” (OED)

B. “A constellation, regarded as a figure or delineation of a person, animal, or symbolic object”

From definition A and B, the following may be extracted: Delineation-> “tracing out something by lines”

• Trace; palimpsestic.
• Ghost-an absence that is paradoxically present through a haunting.

C. (a)as simulating the appearance of someone, or

considered as unreal; (b) as compared in some respect to a statue or idol;

From Definition C, the following may be extracted:

• Appearance; disappearance; reappearance; vanishing

Finally,

Imago (Latin) “copy, statue, picture” from imitari, “to copy; imitate”

Imagier (French) “to form a mental picture”

re-presenting: re-modeling : re-re: dada data.

An Image seems to mean a hollow copy. 

:Likeness:

Like:

A. “Having the same characteristics or qualities as some other person or thing; of approximately identical shape, size, colour, character, etc., with something else; similar; resembling; analogous

G. “Of two or more persons or things: Having the same or closely resembling characteristics; mutually similar; 

- “One who closely resembles another.”

A "likeness" seems to mean a close resemblance to the original.
what or which is the original?
In light of Genesis 1:26, I propose the following:
Image = Flesh & Body

Likeness = Mind & Soul (Corporeal)

The tautology of Genesis 1:26 seems redundant unless one takes image and likeness as different terms and not synonyms. The outline above illustrates a few definitions on the terms "image" and "likeness;" indeed, both mirror very similar definitions, yet it would be a mistake to discount the repetition of any word in a text considered holy scripture as mere wordiness. In this skein, the origin of humankind (in Judeo-Christian terms), one may interpret, finds its source in the image and likeness that God made mankind in.

what does this mean?

this might indicate that the mind and soul are connected to the likeness of humankind and that the flesh and body are connected to the Image of humankind. The original sin gave Adam and Eve awareness of their body and flesh (image); might they have lost their "likeness" to God at that moment? perhaps.

Main point:
the emptiness one perhaps feels might come from the lack of "likeness" to the original. Something's missing; we have the image, but have lost the likeness, and this is the quest that seems to torture, and which might be why we propitiate a holy nada.